Rest api standards and best practices

REST WEB SERVICE DEVELOPMENT
GUIDELINES AND BEST PRACTICES
PRESENTED BY:
ANKITA MAHAJAN

OBJECTIVE
This presentation gives an overview of best practices and
guidelines for creating a rest service or for developing a rest
service framework, over HTTP.
These conventions are also helpful for rest services consumers.

NAMING AND URI CONVENTIONS
API VERSIONING AND CATALOG
COLLECTION RESOURCE
ERROR RESPONSE ENTITY
REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION
A
G
E
N
D
A
RESPONSE STATUS CODES
SINGULAR RESOURCE

INTRODUCTION
REST
Constraints
Client-Server
Stateless
Cacheable
Uniform
Interface
Layered
System
Code on
Demand
(optional)
• REST: Representational State Transfer
• REST CONSTRAINTS
• BASIC TERMINOLOGY:
• Resource
• Collection
• Instance/Singular
• REST API or service
• Resource Identifier
• Root resource
• Sub-resource

BEHAVIOR
• Behavior: HTTP methods
• GET
• POST
• PUT
• DELETE
• HEAD
• PATCH
• Behavior should be implemented based on CRUD, unless there’s a specific
requirement otherwise.
• Coarse-grained approach for data
• Media type or Data format of response: Client should be able to parse
response
• application/json
• application/xml

NAMING CONVENTIONS
• SEMANTICALLY PRECISE
• LOWER CAMEL CASE
• SHOULD NOT CONTAIN:
 UNDERSCORES
 HYPHENS
 NUMBERS
• Date/Time: UTC should be used, following ISO:8601 date/time standard
• Collection resource names should be PLURAL NOUNS (not verbs)
• Ex)
/service/api/v1/departments/12/shelves/34/products

RESOURCE URI
• Collection resource: /[context/]version/resourceName
• Ex: /store/api/1.2/employees
• Singular resource: /[context/]version/resourceName/resourceId
• Ex: /store/api/1.2/employees/2
• Child resource: rootResourceUri/childResourceName
• Ex: /store/api/1.2/employees/2/feedbacks
• Query Parameters: /resourceName?queryParam1=val1&queryParam2=val
• Ex: /store/api/1.2/employees?department=20&experience=5

API VERSIONING
• Clients should know desired version no.
• Multiple API versions can exist
simultaneously.
• It should be possible to find out
current/latest version
GET /store/api HTTP/1.1
Host: grocers.com:7001
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
{
[
"v1": {
"canonicalLink": "/store/api/v1"
},
"v2": {
}
],
"canonicalLink": "/school/api"
}

RESOURCE INDEX/CATALOG
• A list of all resources available in the API.
• Must include all root resources.
• Separate catalog for each version. Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
{
“employees": {
"canonicalLink": "/store/api/v1/employees"
},
“customers": {
"canonicalLink": "/store/api/v1/customers"
},
"capabilities": {
“cashAccepted": true,
“cardAccepted": true
},
}
Request:
GET /store/api/v1 HTTP/1.1

GET SINGULAR RESOURCE
• Use GET HTTP method to fetch response, based on accept header.
• Accept header: application/JSON or application/XML
GET /store/api/v1/products/12 HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
{
"id": "12",
"name": “Nutella 300g",
"price": “100",
“category“: “spreads“,
"canonicalLink": "/store/api/v1/products/12"
}
GET /store/api/v1/products/12 HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/xml
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
Content-Type: application/xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<resource>
<id>12</id>
<name>Nutella 300g</name>
<price>100</price>
<category>spreads</category>
<canonicalLink>/store/api/v1/products/12</can
onicalLink>
</resource>

CREATE SINGULAR RESOURCE
• Use POST HTTP method targeting a collection resource URL.
• Response MUST contain new resource’s URI in Location response
header.
• Response MAY contain the following in response body :
• The newly created resource
• A generic acknowledgement with entity id and/or URL of the new resource
Response:
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
Location:
https://grocers.com:7001/store/api/v1/products/12
{
“msg”: “Product created successfully”,
"id": "12",
}
Request:
POST /store/api/v1/products HTTP/1.1
{
"price": “100",
“category“: “spreads“
}

FULL UPDATE SINGULAR RESOURCE
• Use PUT method targeting the singular resource, for “full” update
• As per HTTP specification, the full resource representation should be
provided in the PUT request body
• Read-only fields like “id” and “canonicalLink” in request body should
be ignored by API
Response
HTTP/1.1 204 No content
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
OR
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
{
“msg”: “Product updated”,
“id”:12,
}
Request
PUT /store/api/v1/products/12 HTTP/1.1
{
"id": "12",
"price": “200",
“category“: “spreads“,
}

PARTIAL UPDATE SINGULAR RESOURCE
• Use PATCH method along with a “patch document”
• Service SHOULD allow client to update only required attributes of a
resource
• Patch-document specification:
• XML Patch [RFC5261]
• JSON Patch (draft-ietf-appsawg-json-patch)
HTTP/1.1 204 No content
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
OR
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:13:00 GMT
{
“msg”: “Product price and category updated”,
“id”:12,
}
PATCH /store/api/v1/products/12 HTTP/1.1
{
"price": "300",
"category": ""
}
OR
To avoid HTTP proxy issues with PATCH, use:
POST /store/api/v1/products/12 HTTP/1.1
X-HTTP-Method-Override: PATCH

GET COLLECTION RESOURCE
• API MUST return all default attributes of child resources along with
their canonical links.
• Based on performance or scalability requirements, paging and/or
filtering MAY be supported to return a subset of child resources.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 03 June 2016 07:32:00 GMT
{
"items": [{
"id": "12",
"name": “Nutella 300",
"canonicalLink": “/store/api/v1/products/12"
},{
"id": 35",
"name": “Fruit Loops",
}],
"canonicalLink": "/store/api/v1/products“
}
GET /store/api/v1/products HTTP/1.1

COLLECTION RESOURCE PAGING
• Paging is used to retrieve a subset of collection items based on two request
query parameters: offset and limit
• To get the next/previous page, query the next/previous link
• hasMore specifies if there are subsequent elements to be retrieved
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 03 June 2016 07:32:00 GMT
{
"items": [{
"id": “11",
"name": “Taj Mahal tea",
},{
"id": 12",
"name": “Nutella 300",
}
],
"hasMore": true,
"canonicalLink": "/store/api/v1/products",
"selfLink": "/store/api/v1/products?offset=10&limit=2",
"previousLink": "/store/api/v1/products?offset=8&limit=2",
"nextLink": "/store/api/v1/products?offset=12&limit=2"
}
GET
/store/api/v1/products?offset=10&
limit=2 HTTP/1.1

RESPONSE STATUS CODES
• Each HTTP response contains a status code which signifies the result of
the HTTP request. The following should be supported:
• 200: OK. Response for successful GET, PATCH, PUT, DELETE
• 201: Created. Response for successful POST
• 204: No Content. Request successfully executed & response doesn't have
content
• 400: Bad Request. Invalid parameters, parameter values or data format
• 404: Resource not found. Invalid URL/resource
• 500: Internal server error
• The entire list of HTTP status codes can be found on httpStatuses.com

RESPONSE ERROR ENTITY
• In case of a any error or validation failure a special response should be
used.
• An error entity should only have descriptive error details relevant for
client.
• Response should never have stack trace, internal code or file paths.
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2016 11:32:12 GMT
{
"httpStatusCode": 400,
"httpMessage": "Bad Request ",
“errorTitle":”Invalid instance id”
"errorCode": "errorcode:invalid:id",
"errorDetail": “The requested product does not exist“,
“moreInfo “: “http://www.grocers.com/errors/400/product"
}
GET /store/api/v1/products/6000
HTTP/1.1

REFERENCES
• Architectural styles and the design of network-based software
architectures, PhD Dissertation, Thomas Fielding,
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/fielding_dissertation
.pdf

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